U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#381

Post by nate_meurer » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #315

nate_meurer wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paramo. There may a couple other smaller ones too. I haven't looked in a while.

Isn’t Paramo unique in that their garments are intended to keep you comfortable (while damp) rather than a typical DWR costed shell that is intended to keep you dry ?

That's their reputation for sure, and their marketing plays up the whole "vapor transport" thing, but make no mistake, Paramo is in pursuit of the same holy grail as everyone else: a fabric that's both breathable and completely waterproof in all conditions. Like a duck.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#382

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 3:55 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #380

rayiner wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention they're just some random people, nation building or not. No rational reason to treat their work like some higher command centuries later. We treat their work "like some higher command" because it literally is that. Their work (the Constitution) creates a framework that overrides anything enacted by contemporary legislatures. The reason that's so important is because we often (usually?) don't agree on…

> We treat their work "like some higher command" because it literally is that. Their work (the Constitution) creates a framework that overrides anything enacted by contemporary legislatures. That's just a choice (not even a popular ie. majority choice, just a choice pre-made by how the founding fathers set up the system, nobody is actually asked about it). It could be totally abolished tomorrow like such things have…

> It could be totally abolished tomorrow like such things have been countless times in past and present societies.

It could! There is even a legal mechanism for doing so.

> It's not a natural law or god given framework.

It’s even more important than natural law! It’s actual law.

> But nobody was asked whether we "do that" not. It's not that we don't do it because "we don't agree on what the alternative meta-rule should be" and thus we are fearful of doing it. It would have been that if we had voted about it, and decided so. But instead, it's not that we don't do it, but that we're not allowed to even vote on doing it or not (well, US citizens aren't allowed that is).

You and your friends probably never voted on whether to frame one of your group for murder, but it would be entirely fair for you to assume that such a vote, were it to be taken, would fail.

We proposed and amended the constitution 11 times in the 20th century (not counting one amendment that was proposed in the 18th century). During any of those times, if anyone thought there was support for more sweeping changes, such an amendment could have been proposed.

> I don't know about that, seems to work for other countries with no holy "founding father" dictums.

Those countries aren’t 50 separate sovereignties connected by a basic legal compromise.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#383

Post by dang » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

thrillgore wrote: post #161

JSeymourATL wrote: post #83

Today's Edition of Fear Your Government > The White House and the EPA had tried to stop the report from being published.

The Trump administration in effect.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it a lot lately, and we ban accounts that do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#384

Post by james_s_tayler » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

nate_meurer wrote: post #292

mark-r wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider what happens to your immune system when it detects a foreign particle that it can't get rid of because there's no way to interact with it.

For the most part, what happens is nothing. PTFE is completely biologically inert, which is why it's commonly used in surgical implants and prosthetics. Only the finest particles ( Ingested PTFE passes right through the digestive system unaltered. You can scrape the non-stick coating off of all your pans and eat it, and there will no detectable fluorinated chemicals in your blood. However, if you heat that nonstick p…

>You can scrape the non-stick coating off of all your pans and eat it

This almost sounds like a dare. Maybe it could even be the new Tide Pods thing.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#385

Post by meowface » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #226

meowface wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. There are many different ways to implement a democracy. The choices aren't "democracy as it currently exists in the US" and "authoritarianism/monarchy/oligarchy/everything else". I also don't think people are voting for the current political architecture, or would be capable of voting for any other.

I didn't say that it was the only way to do it. What I said is that the US is currently more democratic than it ever has been. Obama, and later Trump, are the most truly democratic presidents we've ever had. They were chosen by the people, without regard to the traditional elite process that more or less determines the nominee.

In what way have past presidents been determined by elites more so than they have now? The US doesn't really seem any more or less democratic than it's been for the previous 100 years.

I agree this is what democracy looks like, though. Demagogues like Trump (if one agrees that he's a demagogue; many surely disagree) are a likely eventual outcome of it, though they also have an advantage in almost every other system.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

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Post by natmaka » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #85

Frost1x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…

>Democracy is mostly a facade in the US anyway. But I agree, the US government isn't functioning 1) as originally intended or 2) for the benefit of the majority of the people it 'represents.' Although it's worth noting that 'as the forefathers intended' carries more weight than it typically should. Their intentions were mostly based on philosophical guess work, as they didn't have a whole lot of empirical data or exi…

The EU is theoretically more representative than the US government, by the processes involved in Parliament members elections, however voter turnout is low and falling (down to 42% in 2009 and 2014). Compare with ~56% in the US during Presidential elections, and ~50% for House of Representatives elections. In the EU it climbed back to 50% in 2019 when voters massively bumped up parties not so pro-Europe (Farage, Le Pen and Salvini). It seems to me that, as the EU is less transparent and accountable than most member nations's governments, many voters lost interest then are now actively trying to (reform/destroy/escape from) it.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

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Post by JabavuAdams » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

briefcomment wrote: post #256

GrumpyNl wrote: post #23

Lets thank dupont for that

I'm a little confused at how this happens. Dupont is just made up of people. Those people need to live somewhere, drink water, and do normal people things. Do they not realize what they are doing as they are doing it, and only become aware it's a problem after the fact? Because if they knew it was problematic from the start, they would almost seem suicidal.

People need to eat. Lack of money kills you this year. Some technical science-talk spread by ideologically opposed people about how you're going to get sick decades from now -- who knows if it's even true?

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#388

Post by fiter » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #369

rayiner wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this misperceives the nature of the American polity. 20-35% support secession of their state from the union, depending on region. https://images.app.goo.gl/8fwmTm44Q55ReEV76 . For comparison, the Basque region of Spain is at 17%. That’s certainly not a position advocated by “the rich.” Is it so hard to believe that a big chunk of the rest are skeptical of big government? Distrust of the government is deeply b…

A related example might be the prevalence of downstate Illinoisans who support "seceding" from Chicago, despite the fact that downstate Illinois gets something like $3 for every $1 it pays in taxes, and Chicago less than $1.

How many dollars is your freedom worth? I don't think they distrust big government because it is receiving too much money.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

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Post by kikoreis » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #357

ip26 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even in those "compostable" curiously-grease-proof bowls you see at Qdoba, Chipotle, etc. https://grist.org/article/chipotle-sweetgreen-bowl-compost-p...

I recently learned a lot of 'compostable' plasticky items are not bio-degradable. They rely on a technicality to say they can be composted after being pre-treated or broken down with another chemical or process. Or something ridiculous of the sort.

As long as there is a process in place to ensure that is done post collection, why is that a problem?

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#390

Post by strainer » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

nate_meurer wrote: post #214

Meanwhile, these same PFAS chemicals are sprayed liberally onto the surface of clothing that we all wear, and increasingly furniture as well, and this may account for far more human PFAS consumption than drinking water. PFAS chemicals are widely used for waterproofing fabrics. The industry term is DWR -- Durable Water Repellent. The chemicals are sprayed onto the surface and simply left there to rub off on your hands…

A very valid comment but I think it should be seen in addition to the issue of PFAs from manufacture and mil/industrial uses which are polluting the wider environment and drinking water to a significant but unclear extent. I think it is fair to expect that PFCs most commonly employed in everyday materials are better researched for safety than those polluting the wider environment, at least it is not fair to assume equivalence just because they are PFCs. The following conversation on useful materials which I also found diverting rather focuses the issue on risk and utility to self, while persistent pollution has the potential to affect all for a very long time regardless of whether they are users, children, even human or animal.